1. Individuals

2. Individuals
In order to coordinate and cooperate, people need to understand each other
This requires communication

3. Communication Ants communicate via pheromones
E. O. Wilson
Bees communicate via elaborate dances
Von Frisch
Humans communicate principally through language
Holldobler, Bert and Edward O. Wilson Journey to the Ants: A Story of Scientific Exploration. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Von Frisch, Karl, Karl Von Frisch and Thomas D. Seeley The Dance Language and Orientation of Bees. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

4. The importance of common language
Communication facilitated by common language
The Tower of Babel

5. Genesis 11 (King James Version): 11:1
And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. 11:2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. 11:3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. 11:4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. 11:5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. 11:6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. 11:7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. 11:8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. 11:9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

6. Insufficiency of common language
Shared language is essential
But it is not enough

7. Insufficiency of common language
Language offers a means of describing objects and feelings
Without common knowledge, no understanding
Cricket vs. baseball
But the meaning given to objects is variable

8. For example
Weights and measures
Currency
Time (the calendar)

9. For example What is the meaning of a coke bottle to you?
What is the meaning of a coke bottle to the people in the movie “The Gods Must Be Crazy?”
What is the meaning of this object?
Show clip of The Gods Must be Crazy
Switch to other meaning exercises
-meaning of apple

10. Meaning, cont’d What is the meaning of an apple to you?
Snow White?
A teacher?
A Kazakh?
An American?

11. Meaning, cont’d Meaning affects how people behave
Lack of shared meaning may create conflicts

12. Explaining meaning
If shared meanings matter so much, then we need to explain them

13. Karl Marx

14. Marx What is Marx trying to explain?
Shared meaning: consciousness/ideology

15. Marx: Cause
Men differ from animals in that they produce their means of life
What individuals are corresponds with what they produce and how they produce it
The production of ideas and concepts flows from man’s material activity and commerce

16. Marx: Cause Cause: The mode of production
What we produce and how we produce it

17. Marx: Causal Relation
Mode of Production  Ideology

18. Marx: Mechanisms/Assumptions
People are malleable
Not innately “good” or “evil”
Rather, we change depending on our material world

19. Marx: Draw the theory
Mode of Production
Ideology

20. Marx: How do we know if the theory has merit?
Look at the empirical world

21. Empirical implications
Ideals of sharing should be more pronounced in societies dominated by big game hunters than in those dominated by gatherers of salmon and berries
Groups that participate in the global economy ought to see things differently than those that engage primarily in subsistence agriculture (see work by the Norms and Preferences Network)

22. Emile Durkheim

23. Durkheim What is Durkheim trying to explain? So, Outcome = Beliefs
Religion/Beliefs
Why some objects/actors/ideas are viewed as sacred
So,
Outcome = Beliefs

24. Durkheim, cont’d Religion involves sacred things Sacred versus profane
Set apart by a peculiar attitude of respect toward them
Totem
Profane things
Defined by their intrinsic properties

25. Durkheim on ritual
Rites are the actions that are performed in relation to sacred things
Without knowing its beliefs, the ritual of religion is incomprehensible
You cannot understand rituals by invoking instrumental logic
Rituals are symbolic
Rituals are indicative of the existence of common values in a society

26. Where do notions of sacredness come from?
Society
The intensity of social interactions
So,
Cause = Intensity of Interaction

27. Durkheim: Mechanism/Assumption
Social interaction produces emotion
Sense of obligation
General efferverscence
People have the desire and capacity to attribute cause
They attribute their strong emotions to the divine

28. Durkheim
Thus strong emotions generate religious beliefs and sentiments

29. Durkheim In turn, beliefs affect behavior
Individuals living in moral harmony have a sense of confidence
Individuals act in accordance with their beliefs
Contradictory beliefs are held at bay

30. Durkheim: Draw the theory
Intensity of social interaction
Belief
Individual action consistent with belief

31. Durkheim How do we know whether the theory has merit?
Look at the empirical world

32. Fleck on scientific facts
Durkheim: religious and political concepts have social roots, but scientific concepts are universal
Fleck: scientific concepts are also social constructions

33. Fleck, cont’d
Research findings only become scientific facts via extended social negotiation
‘thought styles’
Cf. T. S. Kuhn: ‘paradigms’ in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1970)

34. The case of syphillis
15th c: syphillis first described. Cause: the product of a particular astrological configuration on 11/25/1484
21st c: syphillis caused by the bacterium Spirochaeta pallida

35. One-sex vs. two sex model
From ancient Greece to the 18th c, men and women were regarded as having the same type -- a male type -- of body
Females thought to have the same reproductive organs as men, only turned inside out (Laqueur 1990)
18th c. onward: prominence of the ‘two-sex’ model

36. Fleck: Cause
Networks of interaction

37. Fleck: Outcome
‘thought collective’
‘thought style’

38. Fleck: Mechanisms Communication, misinterpretation
Because we can’t see inside each others’ heads, communication is imperfect
Furthermore, people have ideas when interacting with each other that they wouldn’t have had otherwise

39. Fleck: Draw the theory
Networks of interaction
Thought style

40. Fleck How do we know if the theory has merit?
Look at the empirical world

41. George Herbert Mead

42. Mead
Not only are ideologies, beliefs, and scientific facts socially constructed, so is the individual
We know who we are only by understanding how others see us
We take on their attitudes towards us

43. Mead The unity of the ‘self’ comes from membership in social groups
We can only be ourselves if we are members of a group

44. Mead: The generalized other
We not only take on the attitudes of others towards us. We also take on their attitudes towards activities.
Only when people take on the same attitudes towards social activities is it possible to organize social life

45. Mead For Mead, the problem of social order is like a game
The problem is making sure that everyone knows the rules of the game

46. Mead
Example: The game of baseball

47. The game
Once everyone knows the rules of the game, they behave accordingly
When people take on the attitudes of the community, then in some way their behavior is dictated by the group
Note that individuals direct their own behavior because they have internalized the attitudes of the group

48. Mead
In summary
Cause = social roles

49. Mead: Mechanisms
People put themselves in the shoes of the other and imagine what the other’s expectations are
People generalize those expectations
People internalize those expectations

50. Mead
Outcome
Internalized attitudes

51. Mead: Draw the theory
Social roles
Attitudes

52. Mead How do we know if the theory has merit?
Look at the empirical world

53. Order via meaning Mechanisms: Situational: Behavioral Transformational
Social and physical environment affects meaning
Behavioral
Shared meaning  individual behavior is consistent with meaning, and therefore predictable.
Transformational
Individual behaviors aggregate to produce social order (coordination)

54. Empirical implications of meaning theories
Cohen and Vandello on the different conceptions of violence in the American South and North
Why is there more violence in the South than the North?
Southerners and Northerners attach different meanings to violence